


Traffic

by Sab



Category: The X-Files
Genre: (Uploaded by Punk), Cheap Hotels, F/M, Los Angeles, Tiny Bottles of Liquor, Too Hot To Move
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1999-10-27
Updated: 1999-10-27
Packaged: 2017-12-03 09:56:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/697029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sab/pseuds/Sab
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They're in LA, it's hot, they get drunk. But everyone's sort of miserable, too. Plus all the ice is melted. (Uploaded by Punk, from Gossamer.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Traffic

**Author's Note:**

> For Sister Phledge, partner in Scullydom and beta reader first class.

Traffic. 

Faint laughing, splashing from the pool.

Sirens, somewhere.

A radio playing Top Forty boy-bands, the straining sounds of contemporary angst. A TV playing local news, in Spanish.

All diffused, diffuse, muffled by the smoggy night, the "marine layer," as the locals lovingly nicknamed that ugly offensive, heavy, dry blanket of grey, of Los Angeles summer. 

Scully lay on the bed, too tired, too sweaty to move, burning like the bastard sister of a snow angel into the itchy coverlet motel owners conspired to call "chenille." If she were in the suburbs, there'd be crickets, now, the familiar orchestral chirping that spelled too many nights like these, in too many motels, with her partner in the next room just a flimsy weak wall away. If she were in the suburbs, if it were just a few degrees cooler, she'd be restless, now. Instead, she was wide-awake whirring and too hot to move.

Another mystery solved. Studio exec calls in a report of haunted sound stage, and superheroes Scully and Mulder race across the country to battle demons. Turns out it was just a stagehand looking for attention--though Mulder still stood firm in his belief that said stagehand was a jilted actress reincarnate--and the mystery was put to bed. But the next flight to D.C. wasn't till the next morning, so Scully would have to be content spending another sleepless night in the godforsaken City of Angels.

And none of this would be a problem, usually; usually she was fine, she'd roll off to sleep unhaunted at the end of the day, but today had been different. That, and it was too damned hot.

She'd been bratty today, she knew that, hostile, even, to Mulder as he combed the sound stage proclaiming signs of poltergeist, shouting fire and brimstone, urging her to see the shadows of his ghosts. Finally she'd snapped, told him in no uncertain terms that it was just too fucking hot to be playing these games, that he was being an idiot, that he was trying to be some sort of ghostbusting hero to fulfill some childish ego-need. 

He'd laughed it off, made some comment about how she looked cute when she was playing fishwife, but she'd wounded him, and the day had spiralled stubbornly downward after that.

Later, trapped in traffic in the rental car with the broken air conditioner she'd apologized, but it didn't sit right, didn't settle, and now, alone in her room, it wasn't sitting right again.

It took everything she had to pull herself up from the bed, and she rose dizzily and began peeling off her sweat-stained suit. Even naked she was too hot, and she splashed water on her face, ran the cold tap over the inside of her wrists and raked her hands through her sweaty, smog-tangled hair and stared at herself in the mirror.

Her fair complexion was blotchy, shocks of red crossed her chest, her collarbone, her neck. Unbidden a phrase flittered into her mind as she took in her expression in the mirror, frowning.

"You are not a very nice woman."

Mulder had said that, she realized, playing the phrase over in her mind. He'd been joking, he'd said it tongue-in-cheek, maybe shadowboxed at her, grinning broadly, but the words had stung, and she'd turned away, suddenly all business so he couldn't see her face fall.

"You are not a very nice woman, Agent Scully."

He was right. But niceness wasn't everything, she argued, to herself, then; niceness wasn't practical, niceness didn't solve cases. 

Yet, somehow, she had to admit, Mulder did solve cases. And Mulder was, she realized, actually, a very nice man.

A very nice man? Crazy, yes. Delusional, yes. But he had a good heart, a fine heart, he was a gentleman. And here she was, knowing intellectually that the heat was as annoying for him as it was for her, lashing out like a child. Calling him names.

She couldn't bear to look at herself another minute, and she turned abruptly, catching her elbow on the door jamb as she headed back to the room to put clothes on.

A tank top--she silently blessed her foresight--and shorts. Unprofessional, but still presentable. She refused to check the mirror again before she left the room and crossed the catwalk to knock on her partner's door. She would play, she would overcompensate, she would do what it took. She would make him smile. God it was hot.

"Scully?" he called. "Just a sec."

She knew without knowing that he was pulling on a shirt, smoothing his hair, making himself presentable for her, covering any vulnerability. Suddenly and surprisingly, alone on the catwalk, it bothered her that he'd go to the trouble.

He opened the door, looking as hot and cranky as she felt, but he was smiling.

How did he manage that, that perpetual smile? she wondered. 

"Aren't you hot?" she said, nodding to his ensemble, jeans, tailored shirt buttoned almost to the collar.

"I think about fifteen minutes ago you could stick a fork in me," he nodded. "Come on in."

She did, crossed the room and sat in the armchair, curling her legs up beneath her.

"What's up?" Mulder asked, perched on the edge of the bed.

She scrutinized him for a moment, her head tipped to the side like a bird. "Mulder, did I, um..." She exhaled through her nose, looking down. "I freaked out a little bit today, didn't I?"

Mulder chuckled. "If I wasn't tough enough to take it I'd be dead now, Scully, you know that. I'm used to it, you know."

She wasn't sure if that was the right answer, and she wasn't sure if she was really interested in not looking at the floor right now. God it was hot. Used to it. Like the villagers playing off the alarmist boy who cried wolf. Used to it. Like it was rote, like it was habit, like it didn't mean anything. Like it was all there was. Like she'd missed her chance.

"Can I interest you in some very small alcohol?" Mulder asked, fishing a handful of one-shot bottles out of the mini-fridge. "I hear it doesn't count as drinking on duty if the bottles are this tiny."

"Why the hell not?" Scully responded, still looking down. Out of her peripheral vision she caught sight of a bottle flying toward her head, and she clapped a hand around it, snatching it out of its arc. She nodded thanks to Mulder, abandoning the carpet for the time being.

"Nice catch," Mulder said. "There are no cups, and there is no ice because some idiot left the ice machine open and now there's just sort of a vat of hairy water in the parking lot."

"I didn't need that image, but thank you," Scully said, snapping the top off her bottle of - what was it? She drank it before reading the label. Oh. Jim Beam. Well, okay. It was cold enough from being in the mini-fridge not to make her want to vomit, and warm enough to dull her senses. She sucked her teeth, swallowing. Drinking: great idea. God it was hot.

"Way to knock 'em back, Scully," Mulder said with more than a trace of admiration. He tossed her another bottle.

How could he admire her; how could he still be so flip, so friendly? Then again, he was like this with everyone. Scully furrowed her brow, trying to think of a time Mulder did something for her he wouldn't have done for someone else. She came up empty about the same time the second mini Jim Beam did. Mulder tossed her a third and she downed it.

"You okay?" Mulder asked, as Scully let the bottle drop from her fingers to the purple/mauve/eggplant/indigo checkered carpet. Okay, she thought. Maybe that. Maybe the hypersensitivity to her mood, maybe the obvious empathy to her perpetual plight...

"I am so boring!" She said aloud, laughing despite herself. "I complain, like, all the time, don't I?" She was more drunk than she deserved to be on three tiny shots, but she didn't let it faze her.

"Well, sometimes I let you drive," Mulder said with a grin. 

"You're not even wondering why I came over, are you? You're just taking it in, taking it all in..." Scully made a broad sweeping motion with her arm, thwacking her wrist against the wall. She cringed. 

"Did you want to talk about something?" Mulder asked. "I sort of assumed it was too hot to work."

"It is!" Scully said, feeling oddly victorious. "How many of these little bottles are there?"

Mulder flipped the mini-fridge catalog between his first two fingers. "Six of each," he said. "Jim, Jack, Absolut, Bacardi, Gordon's."

"God, what kind of tourists do they get at this motel?" Scully asked. "Six of each? And this room only has one bed!"

Mulder laughed loudly. "I think that's the idea, Scully," he said. "Look out the window."

She did, with effort. Sunset Boulevard in all its seedy splendour spread out before her. She'd always pictured the Sunset Strip, the giant Marlboro Man, the side-by-side Armanis and Kenneth Coles and Donna Karans and French bistros when she pictured this street, but all of that was twenty blocks west of here. Out the window this part of Sunset was home to In'N'Out Burger, an IHOP, a McDonalds, and something that was either a school or a prison; Scully couldn't tell. And there, lined up in front of IHOP in leather skirts and go-go boots were Mulder's reference. One bed. Six of each. Well how about that.

"Why are we staying here?" Scully asked, finally.

Mulder rubbed his forehead. "Because it's coming out of my pocket, remember? The bureau didn't think it was necessary for us to come out here just to investigate the Ghost of Twentieth Century Fox Past."

Scully frowned. "You paid for this yourself? I didn't know that. I thought we were expensing it. These little bottles are like gold."

Mulder tossed Scully another Jim Beam. "Go mining," he said with a grin.

Scully willed herself to un-fog her brain. "Did you pay for the plane tickets too?" She asked.

"Don't worry about it, Scully," Mulder said, twisting the top off his own Jack Daniels and lapping her by a bottle. Four down, two (of each) to go.

And he didn't even say anything, and he wouldn't have, she thought. And here she was like an ingrate complaining that this was a bogus mission, when really Mulder had just brought her along for company. Wait a minute...

"Did you just bring me along for company, then?" She blinked up at him. 

Mulder slid down off the bed and sat with his back propped against it on the floor. "No, of course not, Scully. You know I value your insight on these cases."

Scully shook her head, fighting cobwebs. Too much was going on. Mulder paid for the trip, but he'd gotten two rooms. He was plying her with twenty dollar bottles of warm booze. He brought her along because he valued her insight, and she'd been an out-and-out brat all day and he hadn't said a word. He'd gotten two rooms. Booze. God it was hot. He valued her insight? What?

"You value my insight?" she asked, working hard on the words.

Mulder sighed, staring at the ceiling. "You know I do."

"My _insight_? Into _your_ cases?" Scully was accusatory, now, though she was convinced she'd made an untraceable logic leap somewhere along the way that would come back to haunt her.

"Well, technically, okay, yes," Mulder said. "This isn't a bureau case; this was mine."

"And I'm like Penny to your Inspector Gadget?" Scully drained the tiny bottle and stood it up carefully on the padded arm of the chair, staring at it. "No, never mind, that was a stupid reference."

"No, no, Scully, you were doing so well," Mulder said, with more than a trace of surprise in his voice. "I've never heard an unprovoked cartoon reference from you before. You did very well."

"You sound like Hannibal Lechter," Scully said, spitting the name.

"Well, you sound like Clarice Starling all the time, but you don't see me complaining about it, do you?" Mulder was not sober. There would be no operating of heavy machinery by either of them tonight, Scully figured.

She looked at the little empty bottle, balancing squarely on the center of the chair arm. And she turned back to Mulder, met his eye for the first time that night.

"Why did you bring me, really?" She asked.

"Why did you come?" Mulder threw back.

"I thought it was a bureau case," Scully said.

"You know it makes no difference to me, Scully. You know me well enough to know that a good third of the cases we go on are results of my own hunches."

Was that true? Did she know that? Had she always known? Had she come anyway?

"Well then why do you let me chew you out like I did today?" Scully asked, determined.

"You're my partner," Mulder said simply. "Not just on bureau cases, but for everything. You fill in the blanks."

She filled in the blanks. Something inside her told her to be bitter, told her this was Mulder's ego at work again, that he was operating with his usual Messianic attitude that reduced her, perpetually, to a supporting role. Fox Mulder. Billed above the title. The X-Files. Co-starring Dana Scully. Scully waded through Jim Beam's murk, looking for the source of whatever it was she was feeling. She emerged with something else entirely.

"Are you trying to get me drunk?" She asked pointedly.

Mulder locked his gaze with hers, his eyes steeped in alcohol and meaning. Beautiful eyes. "Probably," he said, shrugging.

"Why?" Scully asked.

"Because it's too fucking hot to do anything else?" Mulder tried. "Because I think you knew this wasn't a bureau case, and I think you came for other reasons. Because maybe if we only use one room I'll get my money back for the other one? Who the hell knows." 

Scully slid off the chair, landed on the ground hard. She rolled over onto her stomach, propped her chin up in her hands and eyed Mulder.

"Why haven't we ever slept together?" She asked after what seemed like an hour long pause.

"That's an awfully good question," Mulder said, nodding. "You'd think we would have, wouldn't you?"

"You'd think," Scully agreed.

God it was hot. Her wrists were hurting and she let her head fall to the ground, let her lips taste the salty, dirty carpet. One one hand, he was right. She'd come on this case for the reason she'd come on every case - she believed in it. She believed in Mulder, believed in the work, believed in his hunches more than she'd ever admit. Did she know it wasn't a bureau case? Probably. But on the other hand, she was right. He was leading, she was following, now and forever. She would stand in his shadow, the wind beneath his wings, all that crap. She could see the swell in the wind as his ego bloomed. But on the other other hand, she was trouble. She was a brat most of the time, she argued, she fought, she got in his way at every turn. She was his ball and chain. God it was hot. But on the third hand (fourth hand?) he needed it, needed her, far more than she'd ever needed him, which was considerable. She was his crutch, his support, his support system. And of course he was hers too, but it was different. And of course he was gorgeous. And of course he was getting her drunk. God it was hot.

Scully rolled over onto her back, threw her hands up over her head and let the blood drain from her fingertips before letting her arms collapse back and land in Mulder's lap. Mulder's lap? Oh.

God it was hot. Outside there were hamburgers and prostitutes; inside there were six of each, minus the ones Scully could feel coursing through her veins. Six of each, and one bed. 

There was only one thing she knew for certain, now, her back prickled by carpet and sweat, her hands numb in Mulder's lap, twined fingers with his. He stroked her arm. There was only one thing she knew for certain now. Despite what happened in the hours intervening, despite the events that might play out in this night in Hollywood, here with six of each and one bed, despite everything, there was one fact. And Scully loved facts. And there was one. No matter what happened, she was going to wake up in the morning with one hell of a headache.


End file.
